Strategies for Success in India

• Intensive management is viewed, for the most part, as good management. As a manager, provide explicit instructions and guidance to your teams.
• Clarify anything with a written checklist and open-ended questions.
• Ask for input since many may be reluctant to provide unsolicited feedback. Be conscious to save face when asking challenging questions in front of a group.
• Ask for regular feedback and frequently follow up on tasks in order to maintain schedules and meet deadlines.
• Avoid asking questions that can be answered by a “yes” or “no”.
• Ask questions in several ways to ensure that the way the question was phrased did not impact the response
• Prepare several “what-if” scenarios to help drive change.

Key Business Values in India

• Respect for elders and authorities
• Trust is very important, and is developed through building strong relationships over time
• Preference to work collaboratively
• Family obligations may take precedence over work
• Preference to not give or receive bad news
• Avoidance of giving overt negative response
• Relationship-building activities may take precedence over meeting schedules and deadlines
• Reluctance to take undirected initiative

- from RW3′s CultureWizard® Pocket Guides, also available on CultureWizard Mobile

RW-3.com

The Economist this week touts a special section, led by “The Indian miracle and the future: Rolls-Royces and pot-holes”. The lead article, which is one of several fascinating, multilayered stories, declares “a new kind of capitalism…in which large family concerns, often in their second generation or older, hold remarkable sway” over the “Indian miracle”.

Culturally, it’s not surprising that family dynasties dominate in a society with an unyielding tradition of fidelity to kin and parental power. One of the first things of note in the Indian value system is the crucial, central role of the family. And, given the complexity and opaqueness of India’s legal structure and bureaucracy, dynastic businesses streamline operations and make a lot of sense.

A reader, who’s name is simply “femi,” left the following thought-provoking comment about the lead:

…It would seem from my observations, that wherever you find Indians or people of Indian descent, they are willing to go to great lengths to take advantage of the environment they are in and the people around them. Not only is this driven by a culture which you do not mention in this piece…it seems so deeply engrained in the psyche of the people and seems to have been so for centuries…This inclination to exploit is perhaps what gives India it’s energy…However, what puzzles me is that in analyzing the business environment in various countries I seem to get the impression that most commentators and analysts do not give sufficient weight to culture and the effect this has on the way businesses are run. I think as in the case of India here, more would be understood if additional effort is made to understand the culture and how this impacts on the way businesses operate…

What cultural advice would you give to journalists, writers, analysts and others in the media?

Charlene
RW3 CultureWizard

Saurabh Srivastava, left, the chairman of the Indian Angel Network, meets with young entrepreneurs in New Delhi. Sanjit Das for The New York Times

Hold on! For a society known to be among the most group-oriented and hierarchical in the world, entrepreneurs were a rare, almost non-existent breed. In fact, Saurabh Srivastava, who founded IIS Infotech in 1989 had to wait 2-1/2 years to get permission just to start the company.

But all that’s changing. Along with other like-minded pioneers and entrepreneurs, Srivastava started The Indian Angel Network that not only gives money but sends young, bright entrepreneurs to the Network’s own “boot camps” for mentoring. Do you think India’s younger generations will be able to breakthrough the cultural values of their elders to build innovative, profitable businesses? Read this New York Times article and let us know what you think.

Sure, it’s indisputable that Indian tech giants have their pick of excellent talent, but what about the cultural issues that make people hesitant to break out and take massive risks? Does this business behavior exist on a large scale in India?

Charlene

RW3 CultureWizard

Legal outsourcing firms based in India are creating jobs for US lawyers in a new trend, according to the New York Times. US based employees of legal outsourcing firms describe their working environment as “truly global”.

In April, Pangea3 sent Kirit Amichandwala, a senior manager from Mumbai, to train new employees in Texas on how to conduct document reviews and other tasks the way the company’s lawyers do in India. The new hires ‘all have good document review experience,’ Mr. Amichandwala said, ‘but a lot of the processes we follow are pretty unique to us.’

Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

The “unique” processes are certainly related to Indian culture, which inform the Indian way of business: indirect norms of communication, intensive management of tasks, hierarchical decision making and beyond. Through the process of what we might call “modernization”, many technologies and methodologies have been transferred from West to East, but knowledge transfer for these firms has gone in the opposite direction. In a way, Mr. Amichandwala went to Texas to conduct a pseudo-intercultural awareness program for his American trainees – a key step in preparing a company for success with colleagues working across cultures.

One of Pangea3’s main competitors, UnitedLex, has started regularly swapping teams of lawyers between the United States and India so that employees in both countries can learn to work the same way.

The big challenge is ‘how do you get a bunch of American lawyers to believe that we might be doing things smarter’ by using a process developed in India, said Shelly Dalrymple, senior vice president for global litigation support at UnitedLex.

One American law firm was so won over that it asked a UnitedLex document review manager from India to train its own team in Boston, Ms. Dalrymple said.

The crossing of cultures in the legal world will likely be fraught with the same challenges BPO and other offshoring companies have found in working with its Western clients. It will be interesting to see how this industry continues to expand operations in the US, creating jobs when for years it took jobs.

Sean

RW3 CultureWizard

A CNN report emphasizes that there is much to learn from business leaders in India.

“In terms of lessons for managers elsewhere, one of the most important things is that Indian leaders lead with a sense of social purpose,” said Peter Cappelli, professor of management at Wharton University of Pennsylvania.

“He said every leader interviewed gave a specific social purpose as being the goal of their business. Those purposes ranged from improving healthcare in India, to getting cell phones to people who don’t have access to communication tools, and proving to the international community that Indian companies can lead in IT.”

Motivation in India tends to be fueled by social purpose, along with the well-being of one’s family and work-life balance. Building this purpose into the mission or function of each person’s role within a company reaps true benefits in India. However, would this motivate workers in other parts of the world?

Training and development is also a very important part of working at an Indian firm. “IT firms typically allocate 60 days of formal training for new hires and companies often spend months training even experienced workers hired from other firms.” Given the surge in offshoring and outsourcing over the past years, intercultural and language training have surely been a large part of this.

The article also states that U.S. companies don’t invest in their employees as they do in India, considering the lost investment should the employee quit. Does your organization invest heavily in training and development? What are the expectations of new hires? What kind of training options are on offer?

Click here to read the CNN article online.

RW-3.com